James Harvie Wilkinson III

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James Harvie Wilkinson III (born in New York, New York, September 29, 1944) is a federal judge serving on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. His name has been raised at several junctures as a possible nominee to the United States Supreme Court.

Wilkinson was raised in Richmond, Virginia, and graduated from the Lawrenceville School and with honors from Yale University in 1967, where he was President of the Yale Political Union. He served in the Army from 1968-1969, and in 1970, Wilkinson made an unsuccessful bid for a Virginia seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, running as a Republican. He then attended the University of Virginia's law school, graduating in 1972. From 1972-1973, he served as a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell, an experience about which he wrote a book. His clerkship was followed by five years as an Associate professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, and three years working as an editor for the Norfolk's The Virginian-Pilot. In 1982, he was given a position in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, and after a brief return to the University of Virginia School of Law, was nominated to the Fourth Circuit by Ronald Reagan on January 30, 1984. Wilkinson was confirmed by the Senate on August 9, 1984 by a vote of 58-39.

From 1996-2003, he served as chief judge on that court. In 2003, Wilkinson wrote the majority opinion upholding the right of the United States government to detain Yaser Esam Hamdi indefinitely without access to counsel or a court. Hamdi was a U.S. citizen captured during the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. The decision was overturned by the Supreme Court of the United States.

With the announcement of Chief Justice Rehnquist's illness in the fall of 2004, many commentators listed Wilkinson as a potential Bush nominee to the Supreme Court. Wilkinson talked about his July interview with Bush in the New York Times, undermining his candidacy amongst the Bush inner circle.[1]

Wilkinson has written four books including Serving Justice: A Supreme Court Clerk's View. (New York: Charterhouse, 1974). Harry Byrd and The Changing Face of Virginia Politics. From Brown to Bakke: The Supreme Court and School Integration, 1954-1978. (Oxford University Press, 1993), and One Nation Indivisible: How Ethnic Separatism Threatens America. (Addison Wesley Longman, 1997).